It's first call for 'Closing Time' opera  By Daniel Buckley; Citizen Music Critic
  
Brevity and clarity in opera? Who'd a thunk it?
 
Welcome to ''Closing Time'' - a roughly 35-minute, one-act opera by Scottsdale composer Kenneth LaFave, premiering April 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the Pima Community College Proscenium Theatre, 2202 W. Anklam Road. Lafave is the music critic for the Arizona Republic and a former Arizona Daily Star writer.
 
''Closing Time'' is a piece for the lyric stage that blends neoclassical, popular, and blues elements in a gripping one-act opera dealing with suicide.
 
''It's as long as it needs to be,'' LaFave jokes.
 
The project started after Arizona State University clarinet professor Robert Spring played a virtuoso showpiece by LaFave at a Tempe concert. In the audience was ASU communications professor Robert Kastenbaum - an expert on aging and author of ''Is Dorian Graying.''
 
Kastenbaum had a libretto (book) for an opera that he wanted LaFave to check out.
 
''I thought, 'Oh sure, right,' ''LaFave recalls, speaking by phone from his Scottsdale home. ''It turns out that Bob Kastenbaum is the kind of librettist I think all composers are looking for. He combines the poetic element with the dramatic.
 
''It's about two men who meet in a bar and decide that it's closing time in more ways than one - it's time to end their lives. And then in the end they're sung out of it by a mysterious appearance from a character we call Erda.''
 
Set in a run-down bar, LaFave felt it needed one extra element to round out the atmosphere. So LaFave and Kastenbaum put their heads together and wrote a pop song called ''A Chance For Love'' to introduce the work. The recording of the work was just completed over the weekend.
 
''The theme is these two men who feel their chance for love has passed by,'' LaFave explains. ''The recording hopefully sets the ambiance for this bar, and then the live band picks up the theme that dominates the pop song. It seemed natural to do that and to incorporate blues and certain jazz elements.''
 
Currently, the pair is at work on a companion piece called ''American Gothic,'' which calls for the same small forces as ''Closing Time'' - three singers in the same ranges, a four-piece band and a single set.
 
''Once completed, we'll have a full evening,'' LaFave says. ''That one will be a 45-50 minute work that takes place in the Kansas prairie. We wanted to do a contrasting set to the urban bar, and the language is also contrasting. I'm in the midst of developing what sort of harmonic language is going to dominate the piece.''
 
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